September 16, 2005

Technician George - I reinstalled Windows XP recently, and now the search, windows media player, security center, and picture viewer functions don't work. Please help!

Recently my Windows XP install went haywire due to a corrupted .sys file so I had to reinstall. Thing is, my CD was (and still is) at my parents house so I had to borrow a burned copy from a housemate. I reinstalled Windows XP, and removed the old install. I have my own serial (yes it's legal), but for some reason it wouldn't let me use my serial during the install, even though my serial is for Windows XP Pro, and the CD was for the same, so I used the serial that was on the CD (probably not legal). I have tried to change my serial since then, but every time it says mine is not valid, even though I know it is as I used it before. The end result is that now Windows is intalled, but when I run the search function, or the image viewer, or the security center, nothing happens. There is no error message, the programs just don't run. This isn't so bad as I now use desktop search, a special image viewer, and I don't need the security center as I can handle my anti-virus and firewall without it. The problem is that I can't get windows media player to work, and I seem to need it for streaming .wmv content on the web, especially the Daily Show site. When I try to run WMP10, I get an error message of the sort "Windows Media Player is not installed properly and must be reinstalled. Do you want to install the player from the Microsoft web site?" Reinstalling the player does nothing, same message pops up. I have done much googling but can't find a solution to my problems. Does anyone know what exactly is going wrong, and how I can fix it? Conversely, can I use another player (such as MPlayer, or VLC Media Player) to stream .wmv content on the web.

posted by LoopyG 18 years ago
  • Microsoft uses different CD key generation/vaildation methods for different releases, builds, and channels. For instance, if you have a corporate cd, you have to use a corporate CD Key, and if you use an OEM CD you'll need an OEM CD key. As far as I know, VLC can somewhat stream wmv files. To really solve the problem - start off with a clean install after a quality format. Go get a Windows 98 bootdisk, and format the drive. This kills all your data, so backup what you need. When you've booted with the Windows 98 boot floppy, at the command prompt type in: format c: \u The \u is key, this creates an unconditional drive format. Get your original Windows CD. Install using that CD and your key. If you don't eventually security updates for your computer and your buddy's will get shut off and you'll have to get clever to apply them. And if you run Windows, you *need* the security updates. Problem solved. I deal witha lot of computers issues for people at work and at home. 75% of them could be completely avoided if people didn't half-ass things and expect them to magicvally work perfectly. Don't be one of these people. If you do things right, and do them right from scratch you will have a much more problem-free computer life.
  • I never had any issues like this since I installed Linux. (Windoze snark!)
  • And please be sure to have your computer NOT hooked up to the internet until you've added all the service packs and anti-this and thats. A recent article I read, sorry no linky, had their unsecured test machine hit within eight seconds of being online. Easily beating the several minutes the other test reports showed. And yeah, like un- sez. Switching to something else will work wonders for you. Linux, FreeBSD, OS X.
  • Thanks for the advice geekpdx. I am a computer engineer, so I never leave my comp (or any relatives or friends comps) unprotected on the internet. I was hoping to solve this without having to reformat/reinstall, as that takes up quite a bit of time, which I don't wish to spend. I am quite happy using the alternative apps for all the damaged features. That is, except for windows media player to be used to stream files. I will check out setting up VLC media player to stream (thanks for the link). As for updates, I still get all my windows updates (by being clever applying them mostly), so I am not worried about that. As for the CD key, I am the only one using it, or maybe 1 of 2. It was her fathers copy, and for awhile both her and her father used it, they both have Macs now, so I am likely the only one using it. I'll look for other ways to stream .wmv video before I go to the trouble of reformat/reinstall. However, I suppose if problems crop up in the future that become too much hassle I will reformat at that time. Backup isn't too hard as I have a large external hard drive that can hold everything on my internal hard drive with room to spare.
  • Media player classic would probably also be a good player to have on hand. (not sure if that is what you meant by mplayer or not)
  • media player classic is what I meant. I use it and VLC for watching vidoes saved on my hard drive. It's just streaming content that gives me trouble now. If anyone knows how to force all streaming content to go to VLC or some other player, that would be great. It's ok if it has to open a player to do so, I'd actually prefer to not have to watch it embedded.
  • nonbinary: Connection to the net is almost irrelevant if you have a hardware firewall solution, like everyone *should*, and don't go browsing around anywhere except the update sites until everything is current. Unfortunately, most people don't or can't plan ahead and download all the updates first. Additionally, the problem of which you speak (connecting a freshly installed OS to an unprotected net connection) afflicts linux and BSD as well (exlcuding OpenBSD for the most part).